Playing with the environment: Rhetorical representations of nature and sustainability in digital game spaces
First author: EnglandYear: 2016
Abstract
Addressing a gap in environmental communication research, this study explores digital games as fruitful sites for academic inquiry. Specifically, this study brings together the disciplines of environmental communication, rhetoric, and game studies to examine digital game spaces in order to identify the ways in which rhetorical representations of nature and sustainability are embedded in and played through digital games, specifically The Sims Freeplay, Until Dawn, and Wasteland 2. I employ an autoethnographic methodology— the study of self in relation to larger social, cultural, and political conversations— to research my own gaming experiences, and I use a constructivist grounded theory framework to analyze the data collected from a variety of sources of game play, including gaming journal entries, theoretical research memos, and screen shots/captures. The findings from this study reveal a number of rhetorical representations of nature and sustainability exist within digital game spaces. Representations of the commodification of nature, spiritual and mythical connections to the land, humananimal relationships, and environmental collapse are prominent themes emerging from the collected data. These themes are significant because they allow the player (me) to embody particular environmental ideologies. These ideologies range from anthropocentric (human centered) to ecocentric (nature centered). By contextualizing representations and associated ideologies emerging from game play within larger material-world environmental issues and conservations, this study holds notions of “virtual” and “material” world in tension. To do so advances the argument that digital games can impact our understanding of, relationship to, and communication about environmental and sustainability issues.Details
Language: EnglishCountry of affiliation: United States
Published in: dissertation
Publication type: Dissertation
Source: https://www.proquest.com/openview/c6b716fff2539c1ad6d69bbf320f6690/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750
Games
No Results
Franchises
No Results
Studies
Description: Played game and recorded observations (used journal entries, memos, screenshots), contextualized by separate paratexts/communication
Research type: Non-experimental
Data type: Qualitative
Comparator: none
Control group: no
Pilot study: no
Pre/post measures used: no
Follow-up: no
Sample type: Game(s)
Sample size: 3
Power analysis: no
Sample countries: null
Games studied: Wasteland 2, Until Dawn, The Sims Freeplay
Franchises studied: Wasteland (F), The Sims (F)
Study outcomes: Representing nature, Ingame interactions, Perception